1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the processing of liver and, more particularly, to an unique process for producing a palatable liver product.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
As known in the art, liver is one of the richest natural food sources of selenium as well as various other vitamins and nutrients. Liver is also known to be a major source of certain enzymes. Thus liver is a valuable and highly recommended foodstuff for individuals having a need or requirement for the nutrients provided by this product.
Although the statement of the problem is straight forward in practice, it has been found to be exceedingly difficult to control the intake of selenium, enzymes, etc., when same are ingested from the naturally occurring foodstuff themselves, i.e., liver or other foods such as various meats, fish, and the like.
In such a system it would be necessary to have the patient consume very large portions of the liver each day, i.e., on the order from 1 to 2 pounds, so as to obtain the required dosage and necessary intake of the enzymes and selenium. Obviously, many individuals do not have the appetite for, nor the capacity, to consume enough liver to benefit them in this fashion. It has also been discovered that in many cases, a sustained diet of liver is impossible to maintain because the patient cannot retain same in his stomach.
One possible approach to this difficult problem would be to reduce the bulk of the calves liver without losing any of its essential components. As should be apparent, the bulk of calves liver would have to be reduced to a quantity that would be acceptable to virtually any patient able to eat a minimal portion of solid food. To a large extent, attempted solutions and/or prior art proposals have involved extracting the liver with liquid extracts capable of removing the valuable components of the liver and either employing this extract in the form of a liquid or thereafter drying the extract to form a powdered product. Specific examples of such prior techniques are disclosed, e.g., in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,813,788; 1,895,977; 1,914,338; and 2,032,544. While a number of such techniques have been made, none have proved to be entirely satisfactory. The present invention provides a remarkable solution to this long felt need of the prior art and overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art.